Perovskia, you and my friend said something similar. You mentioned flow and no crashes, he said they seemed polite, "no asshole behavior." Maybe it's something that develops when you want all that up-closeness to work. With cars, there's a lot of metal between you and the next guy. You're more protected. They don't even wear helmets!

I don't know though, there's probably stuff going on I don't notice because I'm not used to it. I did see someone pull ahead by riding on the sidewalk.

Well that's the funny thing between North Americans and Europeans... they don't mind giving up their space. They've had to live 10 people to a hole in a basement to escape the Gestapo (my family had to do this) and I think those mental attributes (for lack of better term) carried down through the years. We are selfish, I'm sorry. We can be close, but I think we still want our space. Not saying there's anything wrong with that.

Given, I'm in Stockholm, not Amsterdam, and for me it's about saving on transportation (Stockholm was counted as the most expensive public transit on the globe last year; and insurance prices/congestion fees make driving a car illogical). I fix my bike myself, too (woman here! bicycles are not complicated). Besides, taking a broken bicycle to a mechanic is quite painful (usually situated in very inconvenient locations, and take long to fix your problem :) )